Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  In a way, Weezer’s hair looked sort of cool.

  As did the black button-down shirt and the blue jeans.

  Holy shit, Glenn marveled. Weezer actually looks cool.

  Mya had noticed too. That gleam of mockery had left her face, in its place a curiosity that could bode very well for Weezer tonight. That was, if Weezer didn’t start talking about illegal immigrants and Democrats and all the other shit that invariably turned women off.

  Weezer clasped his hands before him, right at crotch level. Like they were doing a drug deal or something.

  “I’m Bobby Talbot,” he said. “But as Glenn no doubt told you, everybody calls me Weezer.”

  “Hey, Weezer,” Mya said, leaning on the name a little. She had a playful look in her eyes, obviously digging whatever vibe Weezer was putting out. “I’m Mya. Rebecca and I are visiting from Tinley Park.”

  Weezer nodded. “I’m really glad you decided to come down.”

  Mya’s smiled brightened.

  Keep it going, Glenn thought. You just might be able to change your luck.

  Weezer looked at Glenn, gestured toward his eye patch. “So what do you think? Do I look like Snake Plissken?”

  Glenn appraised him. “Sans the muscles maybe.”

  “No need to denigrate,” Weezer said, smiling at Mya.

  Glenn gawked at him. Denigrate? Are you fucking kidding me? It was Short Pump who was literate, not Weezer. In fact, whenever Glenn and Short Pump talked books in Weezer’s presence, Weezer scowled at them like they were committing some sort of betrayal.

  “Here you go,” Rebecca said and held out a sweating can of Bud Light to Glenn. She turned to Weezer. “You must be Glenn’s friend.”

  Weezer introduced himself.

  Glenn’s own smile faded as Rebecca’s grew.

  “Hey, Weezer,” she said, a little too shyly.

  Glenn stared at her and thought, What the hell?

  But if Weezer was amazed at the girls’ adoration, he made no sign.

  Weezer drew in a smiling inhalation, let it out. “So what’s on tap for tonight? Something gory?”

  “The Guns of Santa Sangre,” Glenn said. “Didn’t you see the marquee on the way in?”

  “Must’ve missed it,” Weezer said, without taking his eyes off Rebecca. “Have you gotten popcorn?”

  “Let me get my purse,” Rebecca said.

  “I’ve got it,” Weezer said. And son of a bitch, he actually took Rebecca’s arm and led her toward the concession stand.

  Leaving Glenn with Mya.

  They stood there looking after Weezer and Rebecca, Mya’s expression one of competitive fury.

  Glenn folded his arms, realized that was exactly what he was feeling too. Weezer, the audacious little prick, was actually challenging him. Never in his life would Glenn have guessed Weezer would possess the sack to do that.

  But maybe, Glenn mused, this was just another aspect of life after the bonfire. He himself had already changed a great deal, so why should he be surprised that Weezer had changed too?

  Glenn glanced at Mya, feeling considerably better about life. They were only halfway through the first movie trailer, for God’s sake. Who cared that Weezer had scored points first? History was on Glenn’s side. History and the fact that Glenn had far more game than Weezer could ever hope to have.

  “How about a Jack and Coke, Mya?” he said.

  She stared at the concession stand. “Not in the mood.”

  “Then let’s have some more of whatever you’re drinking.”

  “Seagram’s Blue Hawaiians.”

  “What are those?”

  “Wine coolers.”

  Glenn suppressed a shudder. “That sounds tasty, Mya. Can I interest you in some popcorn too?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “May as well.”

  Glenn led her toward the concession stand and maintained a smile.

  With difficulty.

  Duane had trouble going to sleep on a normal night, so to expect he’d fall asleep on a night he and Savannah had fought—for the first time, really fought—was more than folly; it was delusional.

  Sighing, Duane tossed the covers aside, pushed out of bed, and dragged on the same T-shirt and blue jeans ensemble he’d worn earlier.

  He didn’t feel like watching a movie because that would remind him of Savannah, and even worse, it would remind him of his loneliness. He didn’t like to articulate it to anyone, but he often felt absurd engaging in certain pastimes because he considered them communal activities rather than solitary ones. Like watching movies. Going for walks. Having sex. It was why he could never sleep after he masturbated. It just felt pathetic for a guy of almost thirty to slap his meat before going to sleep in a pool of his own desperate sweat.

  Duane inspected himself in the bathroom mirror, swished some mouthwash around, then spat and inspected himself again. His face still looked too round, the lines in his forehead too pronounced. You’re twenty-eight, he told himself. How old will you look at forty?

  He scooted out of the bathroom as though fleeing a brushfire and plopped down on the couch to lace up his boots. He liked how thick the heels were, how dark and sleek the leather looked. He felt the boots gave him an edge he lacked, an air of danger that might, under the right circumstances, turn a woman’s eye in his direction.

  He sighed, recognizing the self-deception. He’d bought the boots because they looked like Glenn’s. And since Savannah sometimes seemed interested in Glenn, Duane reasoned the boot similarity might also transfer some of her interest to Duane.

  God, he was pathetic.

  Duane snatched his wallet and keys from the front table, let himself out into the warm June night, and breathed deeply of the cornfields surrounding his house. Earlier he’d toyed with the idea of patrolling Savannah’s house just to make sure there was no danger lurking in the vicinity, but now, the night seemed tranquil rather than threatening, and besides, he’d squandered too much energy—hell, too many years—worrying about Savannah.

  He’d head to the Roof. It was the only place that didn’t totally depress him, maybe because there were usually live bands there rather than a DJ spinning auto-tuned crap for the tourists.

  The drive took about five minutes. He noticed with some surprise that Beach Land wasn’t too crowded. Not for a Wednesday night in June. After making his way inside the park, he navigated the maze of cottages where the summer employees lived. Soon, Duane ambled by the log flume ride, the Cropduster Express, which was a decent-sized roller coaster made of wood, one of the oldest in the nation. As if that were a good thing.

  The Cropduster roared past him, the screams of its riders shrilling as it hung a sharp turn and vanished into a tunnel. Duane scented the oily tinge of corn dogs, the sugary aroma of funnel cake. His stomach growled.

  He continued into the alabaster spill of light cast by the game corridor. On his right there was a whack-a-mole game, the football toss. A stand where you hurled a softball at milk bottles that probably weighed ten pounds each. On the left there was a ring toss, skee ball, a game where you aimed quarters onto a sheet of green felt and watched a copper-colored block steamroll everything toward a drop-off. As a kid Duane must’ve wasted a hundred dollars on that game, dropping quarter after quarter just for the joy of watching a useless toy tumble over the edge into the winner’s slot.

  Grinning a little, he moved past the glassblower’s shop, an enormous verdigris fountain littered with pennies, and onto the boardwalk. Here the games resumed, the larger ones requiring open air and a lot more space. The basketball shoot. Another football toss, this one with a mechanized moving target. The games gave way to rides, small ones like the Scrambler and the Tilt-a-Whirl on his right, the area of the park that bordered the lake. On his left there were more games, several shops that sold clothes and trinkets. Interspersed with the shops were indoor ri
des, one a haunted pirate ride, the other the kind where you shot laser guns as the rolling car moved you through a poorly lit array of fluorescent targets. The crowd, though slightly smaller than he would have expected, was raucous. Several teenage boys dribbled basketballs, their shirts tied like rags around their low-hanging belt loops. Girls wore bikini tops beneath saggy tank tops. Duane moved past the bumper cars, also on the lakeside, and then the waterpark, which accounted for half of Beach Land’s allure. It was closed this late at night, but the beach area, the teal-colored snarl of water slides, the meandering Lazy River, and the garish kids’ splash park were all illuminated by tall light poles. Beyond the water park, the dark water rippled lazily as boats idled past. Several eateries drifted by on Duane’s left, the rock music blasting out of the open-air bar becoming more and more pronounced. He identified the song right away as Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” and suppressed an eye roll. He wondered if Midwestern cover groups were required by law to include the song in their sets.

  With a quick glance at the old-school video arcade straight ahead, he mounted the steps leading to the Roof, retrieving his wallet as he climbed. He paid the cover, went in, and discovered the place was even less populated than the amusement park. Rather than the normal three hundred or so people that typically crammed the place on summer nights, this evening there were maybe half that number nursing drinks and nodding their heads listlessly to the music. Duane was encouraged by the presence of several attractive women, though a goodly number of them were with men, or just as frighteningly, with groups of women. Maybe if Glenn were here Duane would have a chance at engaging one of the women in conversation, but on his own he knew he’d never have the guts to separate one of them from the herd.

  Duane deflated onto the bar. The whole process seemed unbearably daunting. All that effort, and what would come of it? Whatever came of encounters like these? You either hooked up for a night never to see each other again, or you agreed to meet again and suffered through a painful date. Or, the woman never called you back at all, and you realized she’d just been humoring you at the bar.

  Duane ordered a beer and eased down on a stool. Onstage, the band said they’d be back in ten minutes, and blessedly, the bar was filled with conversation rather than the grating sounds of crappy seventies music.

  He glanced down the length of the bar, which was maybe fifty feet long and lacquered to a dark, shiny brown, and saw how the lines to the bathrooms beyond had swelled. The bartender brought his beer, carelessly sloshing the foam over Duane’s knuckles, but Duane said nothing, paid, and swiveled on his stool to take in the rest of the room. Decent-sized dance floor to the left, tables and booths to the center and to his right. Ceiling fans blowing the hot air around, the ceiling painted black and made to look like a miniature night sky with a thousand pinpricks of light peering through. Beyond all that, the water park and the lake with its scattering of idling boats, their red and green lights trawling silently through the summer darkness.

  Quite a few patrons migrated from the tables around the dance floor and crowded the bar on either side of Duane, and though there were a couple familiar faces in the throng, he didn’t know either of them well enough to hope for an invitation to their respective groups. There were several vacant tables, and though he worried he’d choose one that was already claimed, he liked the fact that the tables were nearer the boardwalk, nearer the lake.

  He rose and began moving through the crowd. He sipped his beer, nodded at a woman maybe fifteen years his senior who was gazing up at him from a booth. He filed away the eye contact for later, thinking if he got drunk enough she could give him a ride home.

  He took a table for two against the railing that overlooked the boardwalk. That way, if fate did happen to smile on him, or he got desperate and decided to try it with the older lady, there’d be a place for someone else to sit.

  Duane sipped his beer and frowned at the empty chair.

  Who was he kidding?

  Not only were the odds of him hooking up dismally low, the fact was Duane didn’t really want to hook up anyway. If he couldn’t have Savannah, he didn’t have a whole lot of interest in the opposite sex. Oh, he found women attractive all right. But he was content to look at them rather than going through the whole excruciating process of luring one back to his house, feigning passion where there was none, and feeling like hell the next day. It wasn’t really guilt he experienced the day after a one-night stand. More like a general feeling of grossness. Like he’d compromised himself and the woman. That he was inevitably hungover on those headachy mornings didn’t help, nor did the awkwardness of seeing the woman to the door and kissing her goodbye despite the fact that they both had horrible yeasty morning breath. But primarily, it was the unshakeable truth that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, wasn’t supposed to be faked and quick and soaked in alcohol. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but he could never be like Glenn. No, Duane was too sentimental to pretend he didn’t care. And that was the point of a one-night stand. To not care. To rut like dogs and then pretend like it didn’t matter.

  But for him, it did. Maybe that was a character flaw. Sighing, Duane let his eyes rove over the crowd. Soon, the room would settle and the band would butcher another song. Duane squinted at the bass drum, attempting to discern the name of the group. After leaning forward and narrowing his gaze further, he discovered it was Dance Naked. There’d been a John Mellencamp song of the same name, he thought. Wasn’t that a copyright violation or something?

  He leaned back, rested an elbow on the railing that overlooked the boardwalk. Breathed in the night air. Even if he was alone, even if he’d never woo Savannah, at least he could appreciate these simple pleasures. The sky, he saw at a glance, had begun to gleam with tiny spangles of light. Maybe he’d take a walk when he got home, just breathe the night air and let the star glow wash over him. He frequently told himself he’d do things like that, but he always ended up doing something pointless instead. Surfing the Internet. Watching a horror movie on Netflix he’d seen a dozen times already. Wasting his life. It was about time he woke up and—

  “Mind if I join you?” a voice asked.

  Duane looked up at the man who’d addressed him. The same man, he realized, who’d shared their elevator ride in the Devil’s Lair. The man looked just shy of fifty. Conservative. Khaki pants and white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt with green and blue pinstripes. Hair parted on the left side and slicked down the way they used to do it in the fifties. Black-rimmed glasses. The guy looked like a CPA or something. Maybe an extra from an old TV show, Leave it to Beaver or The Honeymooners.

  The man watched him politely, seemingly in no hurry. Hands dangling at his sides, standing at a distance of maybe ten inches from Duane’s shoulder.

  Uncomfortably close.

  Was the man gay?

  Not that Duane had anything against the guy if he was, but it did make him feel a bit awkward. Duane didn’t have much experience in shunning the advances of the opposite sex. How did one go about turning down a homosexual proposition?

  The same way, he supposed. Be polite. Don’t make a thing of it.

  Duane forced a smile. “I’m waiting for somebody, actually. She should be here any minute.”

  “May I wait with you until she comes?” the man asked.

  Duane took a swig of beer. The man was still standing too close, the benign expression on his face somehow disquieting.

  “I’ll go it solo,” Duane said. “But I appreciate your offer to pass the time.”

  “I’m offering more than that,” the man said.

  Definitely gay, he decided. Gay and not taking the hint.

  “Look,” Duane said, “my girlfriend won’t like me sitting with—”

  “I don’t want you sexually,” the man said with a hint of a smile.

  Duane shifted uneasily. “Oh, I knew that, I just figured I’d be better off—”

&nb
sp; “What’s her name?” the man asked, sliding into the chair opposite.

  For a long moment Duane could only stare. The guy’s plain features remained carved in that patient, interested look. Was the dude just socially awkward? Maybe somewhere on the autism spectrum?

  “You don’t know her,” Duane said. He made a point of turning his gaze toward the bar area, as if trying to pick out his nonexistent girl.

  “You’re probably right,” the man said. “I’m new to the area and don’t know anyone.”

  “Huh,” Duane answered, but refused to give him more than that.

  “I’m just trying to get acclimated.”

  Duane sipped his beer. He could feel the man’s gaze boring into him.

  “Don’t you want to know where I’m from?” the man asked.

  God. The guy was clueless. “Like I said, I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Mm,” the guy said. “It’s good to have people who are important to you.”

  Duane glanced at the man without turning his head, and sure enough, the guy’s expression was still maddeningly polite. Duane toyed with the notion that he was part of some hidden-camera reality show. “Watch how this obese bar patron reacts when one of our actors tries to engage him in conversation!”

  “Yeah,” Duane said. “She’s very special to me.”

  The man sat forward. “Tell me about her.”

  Well, why not? Duane cleared his throat, studied the milling crowd. “She’s my age. Blond. I mean, actual blond. Farrah Fawcett blond. Blue eyes with these yellowish flecks that make her look sort of feline. She has freckles on her cheeks.” Duane smiled, imagining Savannah. “On her nose too. I tease her about them sometimes. Then she scrunches up her nose and says she hates her freckles and why don’t I stop talking about them. But I think she secretly likes it. Knows that men find them attractive.”