The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine

by April Lurie

  While Randy sits there stunned, Headbone laughs. “Awesome, dude!” He holds out one hand and, reluctantly, I do that slap-grip thing with him.

  Just when I’m about to explain how the Dead Musicians Society is responsible for landing my sorry butt in jail, I hear a female voice say, “That’s disgusting! Randy, how could you call your father a…God, I’m not even going to say it!” I crane my neck and see a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor beyond the far end of the sofa. She’s holding one of my prized vintage LPs, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and looks like she’s about to fling it at Randy.

  “Chill, Chloe,” Nick says. “Randy’s dad delivers babies. It’s what they call those guys. He meant no harm.”

  She looks at Randy and narrows her eyes. “It’s true, Clo,” he says. “Even my mom calls him that.”

  I hold my breath at the mention of my mother. Randy must have slipped, because he hasn’t spoken her name since she left. He hasn’t even mentioned Philippe LeBlanc, who we’d been taking art lessons from and had thought was our friend. Yeah, right, some friend.

  The girl, Chloe, lowers the LP and I can breathe again. At first it’s hard to tell if she’s pretty—her brows are deeply furrowed, her lips are pursed, and her straw-colored hair is tied up in a messy knot. But when she uncurls her face I see that she is quite beautiful—clear skin, no makeup, light brown eyes with pale lashes. She’s not pretty in a conventional way, but in a way that I like. “I still think it’s disgusting,” she says. “And sexist.”

  Moser puts his feet back on the table. Thankfully, his shoes are on, otherwise I’d have to fumigate later. “So, Dylan,” he says, tucking a few strands of long, greasy hair behind his ear, “what’d you get arrested for?”

  “Shoplifting,” I say without even thinking. Chloe is looking at another one of my LPs—Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle, and it’s making me nervous. “I stole a couple of packs of underwear.”

  “What?” Randy says. “Are you nuts?”

  “And possession of marijuana,” I add. “But they dropped that charge.”

  Headbone starts laughing again. “Dude!”

  Very slowly Randy and Nick turn to each other. From their expressions I can tell they’re piecing together the events of the day. Suddenly Nick says, “Shut up, Headbone! Don’t you see what’s going on here?”

  Headbone looks confused. “No…what? Ohhhh.”

  Now Moser gets it too. He shakes his head, and I pray to God the white stuff in his hair is dandruff and not larvae.

  “Franz Warner gave you the weed, huh, Dyl?” Randy says. “Asked you to give it to me?”

  “Close, Einstein,” I say, “but not entirely correct. Franz Warner thought I was you.”

  Chloe looks up with a smile, which turns out to be her most amazing feature. “Ha, ha!” she says to the four of them. “Serves you guys right! Besides, you need to stay straight if you’re serious about music.” She tosses a pillow at Nick. It skims the top of his head and hits Randy in the face. They all laugh. I wonder which one she’s in love with. Obviously, not Headbone or Moser. That’s simply out of the question. My guess is Nick—he’s good-looking and has what I suppose you’d call charm, but then again, so did the serpent in the garden. Randy could be the lucky one, I think, but honestly, I’m hoping it’s me.

  She sets down my LPs and gets up. Her clothes are unusual—loose and mismatched—and there’s a tear in the knee of her jeans. She walks over to me and, on tiptoe, plants a kiss on my cheek. “Thank you, Dylan. Only, sorry you had to take the rap for these dopeheads. You didn’t deserve that. I’m Chloe, by the way.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’m glad she doesn’t say anything about the underwear. I can’t even believe I mentioned it.

  “Randy and I were in the same math class last year. That’s how we met. My band broke up this summer, so the guys asked me to sing with them. We’ll see how it goes. Oh, wait a minute.” She goes back, picks up the LPs, and hands them to me. “These are yours. I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind that I was looking at them. I was really careful.”

  “Oh, no,” I manage to say, still stunned by the kiss. It’s the first time a girl has touched me in, well, a long time. “That’s fine, really.”

  “Okay, okay,” Nick says, obviously annoyed that Chloe is fawning over me. Well, not exactly fawning, but close. “Let’s get to work, guys. Henshaw’s party’s next weekend and we’ve got a lot of songs to cover.”

  This is what Randy has been doing all summer—playing gigs with his friends at parties around town. Sometimes they get paid in cash, more often in pot, I suspect, but mostly they just do it hoping someone important will hear them. Someone in the music industry.

  As they shuffle downstairs to the basement, where their instruments and amps are set up, I go into the kitchen, stick a sweet potato in the microwave, and pour a glass of milk, glad that there are only two ingredients in this predinner snack and I don’t have to read any labels. Soon I hear Headbone warming up on drums, Moser plucking the bass, and Nick strumming his acoustic while loosening up his vocal cords.

  But the one who stands out above the rest is Randy, who is on another planet musically, compared to his friends. When he picks up a guitar and begins to play, I swear, he owns it. Right now he’s warming up with an awesome riff, something that must have just popped into his head. Randy used to write his own lyrics, too, but since he teamed up with the Dead Musicians Society a year ago, he’s been doing nothing but covers.

  Actually, that’s the whole point of their band—covering dead singers. They play Hendrix, the Doors, and—since Moser is obsessed with Kurt Cobain—lots of Nirvana. Lately, though, they’ve been mixing it up with John Lennon, Duane Allman, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and now, as I drain my glass of milk and pour another, I realize they’ve added a new singer to their list. Chloe is Janis Joplin, and she’s good.

  About halfway through her version of “Me and Bobby McGee,” the phone rings. I swallow the last bite of sweet potato and pick up. It’s the hospital, calling for my dad. One of his patients has gone into labor. It’s not urgent, but the nurse is recommending a nap, since Dad may be up half the night.

  I rinse my dishes in the sink, but before I go upstairs to give Dad the news, Randy opens the basement door. “Hey, Dylan, listen, I forgot to tell you. Angie stopped by this afternoon. She wants you to call.” We lock eyes, and in that moment I am truly grateful that my brother is not stoned. Besides my mom, he’s the only person who understands how I feel about Angie, who, technically, is my best friend, although we haven’t spoken in two months. Not since she left for her summer acting course at NYU.

  Randy taps his hand against the door a few times. “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “You gonna call her?”

  “No. But thanks for telling me.” As he goes back to his friends in the basement, I plod up the stairs, weak-kneed, trying not to think about Angie. Right before she left, I told her exactly what I thought of her asinine boyfriend, Jonathan Reed—a junior on the debate team who thinks he’s all that because he reads Jack Kerouac and James Joyce. But the truth is I wanted to be more than just a friend to Angie, only I was too much of a coward to tell her.

  I look around for my dad—in his bedroom, in the bathroom, in his study—but I can’t find him anywhere. Maybe he’s already left for the hospital. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  I’m not feeling well, so I go to my room and lie down. Later, when the guys leave, when things are quiet, I’ll take out my guitar—a handmade classical beauty from Spain with a body of pure cocobolo rosewood. My friend Jake, who’s the starting point guard on our basketball team, is the one who got me hooked on classical guitar. Before that I used to play rock and blues on electric, just like Randy—he’s the one who taught me—but when you have a brother who’s a musical genius it’s kind of hard to measure up. So, instead of trying, I chose a different path.

  After a whil
e I hear Tripod meowing. Stupid cat. He probably got locked in some closet and is now frantic to get out and use the kitty litter. Since I’m the one who would have to clean up the mess, I go into the hall and listen carefully. The noise seems to be coming from my mother’s studio, which is really weird because as far as I know, none of us have gone in there since she left.

  I push the door open. My dad is sitting in a chair, staring at a half-finished self-portrait my mother started over spring break. It’s a pastel with a lot of purple, green, and yellow—colors that will eventually be blended to form the contours of her face, neck, and shoulders. That is, if she ever comes back.

  Tripod is sitting on my dad’s lap, and surprisingly, my dad is petting him. He’s always hated that cat—a scraggly, half-feral tabby with three legs and a stump for a tail. My mother rescued him from a boatyard in Sheepshead Bay a few winters ago. She wanted to take him with her when she left, but Philippe LeBlanc’s landlord has strict rules about pets.

  I pull up a chair and sit next to my father. His eyes never leave the pastel. Tripod looks at me, meowing angrily, and I don’t have to be Dr. Dolittle to understand what he’s saying. My mother has abandoned him, too.

  “Dad?”

  “Hmm?” He looks my way, but his eyes are glassy and unfocused. Suddenly Tripod sees the open door, digs his claws into my dad’s thigh, and bolts. “Damn, stupid cat,” Dad says.

  “Are you…okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I’m fine.”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you, one of your patients went into labor. A nurse from the hospital called. She suggested you take a nap.”

  He smiles a little. “Oh, did she now?” The reason this is funny is because we all know that if one of his patients is in labor, he’s right there, by her side, the entire time. That’s the kind of doctor he is.

  He’s about to get up from the chair, but I stop him. “Dad, wait, please. I want to explain why I ran out of the store today, you know, with the underwear.”

  “Oh?” He cocks his head. “You mean there’s more to the story?”

  I nod. “I thought I saw Mom walking out the door so I ran after her. Only, of course, it was someone else.”

  My dad doesn’t say anything, and suddenly I can feel the emptiness in every corner of the room. Her room. He places a hand on my shoulder and his Adam’s apple slides up and down. It’s one of those rare male bonding moments between my dad and me, which, frankly, I find embarrassing. Finally, he says, “Dylan, as you know, I’m not exactly…thrilled about what happened today. But honestly, you’re such a good kid and, well”—he looks around the room—“you don’t deserve this.”

  What my dad means is that I don’t deserve to be motherless, but as usual he dances around the subject. The funny thing is we’ve never actually spoken about why my mother left. I guess the whole Philippe deal is too painful and humiliating for my dad. But I know he misses her. I know he does. “But Dad,” I say, “neither do you.”

  He holds up a hand to stop me, shaking his head like he knows better. “Believe me, Dylan, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Plenty.” I wonder if he means working 24/7, not spending any time with my mom when she was home, not taking an interest in her art or her artist friends, which is what they used to fight about all the time. At least I don’t have to listen to them yelling anymore.

  From the basement I hear Randy break out into an amazing lead on Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” He’s even got the feedback going, which is no easy thing. “Listen,” my dad says, “you know I don’t like to draw comparisons between you and Randy, but please, do me one favor, all right? Be true to yourself. Don’t…” He hesitates and finally decides not to finish the sentence. But I know what he was going to say. Don’t wind up like your brother.

  He pats my shoulder a few times, and as he gets up and walks out the door, Randy wails on his guitar. I smile sadly. Don’t worry, Dad, even if I tried I’d never be like Randy.

  Three

  OUR FIRST GAME of the AAU summer basketball finals is scheduled for nine o’clock the following morning, and when my alarm goes off at seven, I open my eyes and see Chloe. She’s sitting on the floor about three feet from my bed with a new stack of my prized vintage LPs on her lap. “Hey,” she says, as if girls appear in my bedroom in the wee hours on a routine basis, “hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t sleep.”

  Sleep? She slept here? I sit up, dazed, hugging the sheets to my chest. I’ve been lifting weights all summer, but I’m still pretty skinny and a little self-conscious about my body. Especially around girls.

  Chloe, on the other hand, doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about my lack of clothing. Or hers. As my eyes begin to focus I see she’s got on a pair of Randy’s old boxers along with this silky sleeveless top; no bra. I’m not an expert, but I do glance at my mom’s Victoria’s Secret catalog every now and then, and I believe what Chloe’s wearing is called a camisole. Her hair, I notice, has been unleashed from that messy knot and it pours over her shoulders in golden waves. Smiling, she holds up my 1977 Saturday Night Fever LP. “This is so cool! Can I play it?”

  “Um…” The truth is, I rarely play my LPs, since they’re collector’s items and scratches lower their value. Also, it’s seven o’clock in the morning and if my dad had a delivery last night, he might be in bed right now trying to catch a few winks. But seeing that I’ll probably never sell my LPs, and since Chloe is very eager to hear some old disco tunes, I shrug and say, “Well, all right.” I’m wearing boxers, but the problem now is how to put on a shirt without her seeing my scrawny chest. I point across the room. “The, uh, turntable is right over there.”

  “Oh, okay, great.” She gets up and starts fiddling with the dials while I open my dresser drawer and grab the first thing I get my hands on. Thankfully, it’s my CBGB T-shirt—the one Angie bought me last Christmas when we went tooling around the Village like tourists. They closed down the music venue a couple of years ago, but there’s still a gift shop where you can purchase memorabilia. I figure this article of clothing will impress Chloe more than my SpongeBob SquarePants shirt.

  “Here, I’ll help you with that,” I say. Unlike my upper body, my legs are fairly developed, so in an effort to appear cool with this whole girl-in-the-bedroom scene, I forgo the jeans.

  “Nice shirt,” she says as I place the needle in the groove of “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees—which is what I’m trying to do as her bare arm brushes against mine.

  “Oh, thanks.” I turn the volume low, hoping no one in the house will wake up, come into my room, and spoil the moment.

  Meanwhile, she tosses the Saturday Night Fever jacket back onto the pile and grabs the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. I keep this LP separate from the others because on the cover is an old Andy Warhol photo of a guy’s rather large jean-clad crotch. It’s got a real brass zipper attached, and it won’t lie flat. Chloe plops onto my bed and very carefully slides down the zipper. “You know, I always forget what CBGB stands for.”

  “Country, bluegrass, blues,” I say, pointing to the first string of letters on my chest, trying not to think about the fact that a girl in a camisole is sitting on my bed playing with a guy’s zipper. “And Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers,” I add, sliding one finger beneath the letters OMFUG.

  She purses her lips. “And…what exactly is a gormandizer?”

  “A voracious eater,” I say. “In this case, of music.” Chloe nods, obviously impressed with my vocabulary, and I’m feeling pretty good about my level of cool. “So, you, uh, slept here last night?”

  Slowly she pulls the zipper up and down, smiling the whole time. I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s doing, and as far as I can tell she’s enjoying it. “Remember?” she says. “I told you, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “But I did stay here, in case you’re wondering. We all did. Our band is practicing today. Next week, when school starts, we won’t have much time.”

 
At the mention of school I suddenly realize why I woke up at this god-awful hour. Our first game of the finals is at McKinley High. Also, I have to stop by my buddy Jake’s house first for a pair of tighty whities. “Yeah, I heard you singing yesterday. It sounded really good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But, uh, listen, I kind of need to get ready now.”

  Chloe shrugs. “Okay.” At this point I expect her to leave and give me a little privacy, but she just sits there tapping her toes to “Disco Inferno.” I sigh, grab my uniform from the closet, and trek out to the bathroom. On the way, I notice that the guest room door is slightly ajar, so I peek inside. As a blast of noxious air hits me, I see Moser curled up in bed, making an oil slick on my grandmother’s favorite goose-down pillow. On the floor beside him is Headbone, sprawled out on the futon my parents brought home from Japan last year. He’s drooling on the cherry blossom design and snoring like a bear.

  Suddenly Nick appears in the hallway, shirtless, a pair of faded jeans hanging low on his hips. Unlike mine, his recent interest in weightlifting has paid off. He yawns and stretches. “Hey, Dyl, you see Chloe anywhere?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “she’s in my bedroom.”

  His eyebrows shoot up, and I walk past him grinning like an idiot. In the bathroom I get changed, and after brushing my teeth and splashing cold water on my face, I tiptoe out into the hallway and take a quick look in Randy’s room. He’s sound asleep, no traces of a girl having spent the night. Next I turn the corner and scope out the game room. On the pull-out sofa bed, among a tangle of sheets, I see Nick’s Florida State T-shirt lying next to a black lace bra.

  I hear giggles coming from my room now, but I don’t go back, even though I’ve forgotten my wristbands—a very important part of your basketball uniform if you sweat a lot, which I do. Instead, I go downstairs to the kitchen, take out the blender, and whip up a soy protein shake, turning the dial to “liquefy.” Since Nick and Chloe are having such a grand old time in my room, I don’t care if the whole house wakes up.