I got up and stretched out. Then I did fifteen push-ups. I got tired at twelve but I powered through. I was dying to tell someone about my mission, so I called Ben at work. Of course, I would have to leave out the part about killing Motorcar with my lethal fists of cosmic fury. Or shooting him. Whatever I was going to do, I knew enough about the law to know I couldn’t tell anyone my ultimate intention. That could make them an accessory or something.
“This is Ben,” he answered.
“Hey, Ben, it’s Jarvis. Listen—I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”
“I’ve got some good news, too. Marguerite can meet you on Thursday. You might be able to start next week.”
“Okay, um…that’s part of the bad news.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m gonna have to delay my…when I start the job.”
“What are you talking about? You don’t even have the job yet. Still gotta interview with Marguerite, man. She can see you, um…hold on…”
He put me on hold. The on-hold music was a brain searing assault of synthesizers and lame jazz electric guitar. It went on forever.
“Sorry about that, Jar. Now what’s the—”
“I’m taking a trip and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m going after him, Ben.” Saying it out loud—I never felt so empowered.
“Going after who?”
“You know who.”
He thought about it for a few seconds and then whispered: “The, um…camp counselor guy?”
“Yup.”
“Oh, man—Jarvis, that is awesome! You should totally blow his brains out!”
“Ben, don’t say that.”
“Why not? You should. If anybody had it coming to him—”
“Is this call being recorded, like, for quality assurance purposes?”
“No, I’m not in the call center. I’m in my office.”
“I thought your office was in a call center.”
“Just—no, we’re not being recorded.”
“You sure?”
“Where is he? Where are you going?”
“Richmond, Virginia.”
“Wow, man. That’s…heavy-duty.”
“It’s been a long time coming.”
“So what’s your good news?”
“That is my good news.”
“Shit. Mmm. Well, why don’t you come in and meet Marguerite on Thursday, go down to Virginia and fuck that guy up, and then come back and start work. I mean, seriously—you’re a shoo-in.”
I let out a giant sigh, a huge lungful of air. It tasted like sheet metal.
“Dude,” I said. “I don’t know about this whole…job thing anymore.”
“What!”
“I really kind of need to focus right now.”
“Dude, I’ll look like a maje weasel if you bail on me.”
“I might be in jail.”
There was a long silence.
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said. “Man…wow.”
“If not, I mean…I feel like some changes are coming. I want to do big things, Ben. I’m not sure if telemarketing is really gonna cut it for me.”
“It’s not telemarketing! You don’t make calls, you field incoming ones.”
“Whatever. Look, let’s just…how about I go do this thing and we’ll see what’s going on when I come back?”
“Okay, okay, fine, but it’s not telemarketing.”
“Thanks for understanding, Tex. I appreciate it.”
We hung up and I went and stuck my head in the freezer. I took a couple of cold deep breaths. My neck was cooling down, but it still felt like there was a fatal car accident stuck at the bottom of my stomach. I went to the bathroom to get some Pepto, but it was fucking empty. Never worked anyway. I wondered if people at the call center knew Ben was a wannabe cowboy in his free time. Did he dress like a cowboy on casual Friday?
Oh, who gave a fuck! I was in a totally new zone. I hadn’t even thought of Carly in over an hour. I was too involved with my mission. I was really going to face down Motorcar. I could feel the excitement rising off my skin like an electrified steam. The highest pinnacle of glory in my life was soon to come. It was going to be brilliant. I was going to be brilliant. And when I come back, if I come back, the world better look the fuck out. The world better watch its ass because Jarvis Henders was going to come back stronger, faster, bolder, better. He was going to be free. Jarvis Henders was going to come back from the sweet magnetic glory of his greatest achievement and devour the world like it was a goddam tuna salad sandwich.
9
I actually slept somewhat well that night. As I was coming to, I thought up some really good zingers to burn Motorcar with, but by the time I was fully awake I couldn’t remember any of them. I tried but it was no use. Took a shower and went to the store, trying out zingers the whole time.
You disgusting, sub-mammal wad of… No.
You perverted waste of a human… Eh, no.
There’s a special spot carved out for you in hell, you puke-filled sack of revolting garbage… Okay, I was improving, but I still needed work.
Whatever I ended up saying to him, the end result was this: I was going to own that piece of human waste. Piece of human waste. Not bad. I needed to write these down. I started making lists.
List #1: “Zingers.”
List #2: “Things needed for mission.”
List #3: “Affairs to be put in order.”
I didn’t really have any affairs. I needed to pay the cable bill. Fuck it—let the cable die. I needed a gun. I could get one at the sporting goods store. But aside from playing paintball, I had never shot a gun. Maybe that wasn’t the way to go. I could strangle him but then I’d actually have to touch that disgusting piece of crap. Okay, strangling was out. Then I realized that I could wear gloves, so strangling was back in. What about poison? Too logistically difficult. Arson? He could escape before the flames got him. And I didn’t really see the point in burning down his mom. She had enough problems living with her pervert loser son. When I ice him she’ll be relieved of that burden, I thought. I’ll be doing countless people a huge favor. I was starting to feel overwhelmed, so I decided to focus on zingers first. I could figure out the means of death later.
I sat there with my half-baked lists, reminding myself that this was the Project of My Life. I felt like the Chosen One. Gradually, the zingers started coming.
You pathetic piece of human shit.
You worthless scumbag pervert.
Get ready to go meet Satan, ass-face!
I had three pages before I decided to take a break. I went to buy coffee and more coffee cake. I came home and drank coffee and ate coffee cake and fell asleep on the couch writing zingers. My favorite so far was you piece of human shit, but I had some really awful ones too, like king of perverts. This wasn’t going to be easy.
The next day I woke up feeling amazing. I had no anger. No anger toward Carly, no anger toward Reinhaus. No fantasies of pushing Carly off the roof of a skyscraper or running over Motorcar’s face with an 18-wheeler. The anger that I did have toward Motorcar was streamlined into the glorious trajectory of my mission. It had evolved from anger to purpose. I wasn’t going to stay mad, I was going to get even. For once, I felt healthy. I even got started on some dishes. So this is what being healthy feels like? I thought this as I scrubbed some crust-covered plates that had been in the sink for about three months.
I picked up all the rest of the clothes off my floor and started more laundry. I washed everything. Seven full loads. The new me wasn’t going to wear dirty clothes, especially in the summer. I was going to care what I smelled like. While my duds were washing, I finished the dishes. While the clothes were in the dryer, I cleaned the living room and wiped down the kitchen. I even dusted a little. I don’t think I had ever dusted in my entire life. Wasn’t quite sure how. I threw zingers around in my head the whole time, but nothing had stuck yet. Took a trip to the grocery store and bought a bunch of food—tuna fish, wheat b
read, mayonnaise, cucumbers, orange juice, bananas and peanut butter. I wanted to be crisp and focused. I got home and made a huge tuna salad and cucumber sandwich and washed it down with ice coffee. I felt so good I wanted to hug myself, but that would’ve been weird.
Now I knew how all those choir boys must have felt, the ones who grew up and decided to go after their pervo priests and gun them down in the street. I could feel the sweet magic that those dudes must have felt when they made their ultimate decision. I was at peace for once. Of course, if those guys got convicted, they’d end up in a maximum security prison and God forbid they should ever “drop the soap.” Seemed like that sort of defeated the purpose of the vengeance, but I didn’t have time to worry about that right then. I needed to get back to work on my zinger list.
I finally came up with something that was sort of okay, I guess. You worthless piece of human shit sperm-waste pervert motherfucking loser psycho slime ball ass-face scumbag pedophile wad of rotten feces stupid live-with-your-mother disgusting ass-neck sick-o piece of human filth! I sat there on the couch and looked at it on the page. It was a lot to memorize. I still needed to tweak it some more. I needed the word “pathetic” in there. Did I have it? No. I needed pathetic.
I decided to go for a run, so I put on my running shoes and went outside into the blazing July heat. At least the humidity wasn’t too bad. I stretched out on the grass by the sidewalk—my hamstrings, my groin, my ankles. I rolled my head around on my neck and it made a crunching sound. Then I took off. Started out at a good pace. I was running, as opposed to jogging. Jogging was for pussies. Motorcar probably jogged. Actually, I doubted that he exercised at all. He was probably a giant couch potato douche-bag. Hey—I should remember that one for my zinger list.
The run was feeling good. I took it out onto Woodfield Road and ran down the grassy shoulder, dodging dog bombs and feeling the blood pump through me. After a while I didn’t even feel like I was running—I was skipping across the treetops. I owned gravity.
Then it hit me, like a surge of majestic truth—I don’t have to kill Motorcar.
I played it over again in my mind—I don’t have to kill Motorcar. I just needed to face him and scream at him. Get my anger out with words. That was the healthy, sensible way. Of course. I started running faster. A feeling of supreme health was rushing through me, both mentally and physically. It all made sense. I would strike him down with my killer death zingers. I would kill his soul, not his body. Then he could live with the pain of hearing my words over and over again forever in his head. This was brilliant. Now I didn’t have to buy a gun or go to jail. I could do this the healthy, cathartic way. This was genius! I felt twenty pounds lighter. I felt so good I ran all the way to the Zoom Thru for a big blasting hot coffee.
My tee-shirt was gloriously soaked with sweat. The air conditioning in the Zoom Thru made me feel like I was walking into a meat freezer. I got a hot coffee and an ice cold bottle of water and stood in front of the store, alternating between the two. I looked out across the hot pavement and up at the royal blue sky and cotton-puff clouds. Everything looked so different when you weren’t wallowing in sick depression like a mega-loser. Everything looked good. I never felt so fucking happy. And I had just gone from being a would-be murderer back to being a free man. But I was still going to have the full satisfaction of giving my victim the what-for. The more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense: violence wasn’t the answer, except for the brutal violence of my words. I was going to lay my burden on Motorcar and let him live with it. Killing him would be giving him a free pass. That bitch wasn’t getting any free pass! And I was going to have a new life. Not as a murderer, not as a stalker, not as the old lame Jarvis. I was going to be the new, shiny, healthy, kick-ass Jarvis. I was going to pull the golden ring off the merry-go-round of life and make love to it. The world was going to belong to my ass.
Big time.
PART 2
10
MY COUSIN EVAN had lived in Richmond a long time. Maybe ten years. He’d gone to art school there but he dropped out. I didn’t know what he did now—made collages out of things-found-in-the-street? The last thing I’d heard about him was he had quit his landscaping job to go on tour with a punk band. I pictured him with a torn shirt and torn jeans, lazily moving amps and drums in between smoke breaks. And by smoke breaks, I meant crack. Whenever anybody in the family talked about Evan, they always said “What a shame.” I didn’t know for sure about his smoking crack, but what I did know was that Evan seemed like a giant sack of wasted potential. He was always super smart and had this look of creative intelligence in his eyes, even when we were kids. But now he was just this art school drop-out freakazoid. A roadie for a punk band. “What a shame.”
He and I got along great when we were kids, though. I was eight months younger but he was skinny and I punched him a lot. By the time we were teenagers he’d become a full blown death metal goth dude. When he showed up at that one Christmas with dyed long black hair and eyeliner and the piercings in his lip, we pretty much officially elected him family weirdo. It was unanimous. He looked so out of place, especially with his mom wearing her bright red Christmas sweater with the elaborate snowmen and reindeer scene on the front.
The most recent time I’d seen him was at Uncle Pie-rold’s funeral three or four years back. Pie-rold’s carotid arteries were so packed with butter and pie crust that he didn’t make it to his fifty-third birthday. Evan showed up at the funeral looking more punk than goth, with spiky short hair and a slightly wild look in his eye. He was pretty upbeat, even smiling at times, which somehow for him didn’t look out of place at a funeral. He pulled it off. Never could figure his ass out.
I only needed a crash pad for one night. I was going to be so focused on my confrontation with Motorcar that I didn’t care if I had to sleep on Evan’s kitchen floor amongst his sculptures of things-found-in-the-street. Being unemployed, I really didn’t want to waste money on a hotel. And I didn’t want to make the three-hour drive down to Richmond, do the confrontation and then drive back all in the same day either. I wanted to be relaxed and steady. I wanted plenty of extra time to case out Motorcar’s house and run a final honing of my zingers.
I got Evan’s number from his mom, my Aunt Pat. She wanted to know why I was calling him, but I wasn’t saying squat. Just wanted to catch up with the old boy. I wasn’t going to tell Evan about the real reason for my visit either. No way. No need to get into all that. So I told him I was interviewing for paralegal jobs down in Richmond as a precursor to submitting my application to several Virginia law schools.
“Nice,” Evan said. “You moving here would be awesome!”
“No, well, I mean, it would just be, like, an internship. Just temporary.”
“It would be great to have you down here, bro. I mean cuz.”
“I really appreciate you letting me stay over.”
“Don’t mention it, dude. People stay here all the time. You can hang as long as you want, check out the area, whatever.”
“Yeah, no. Just one night’ll do.”
“That’s cool. Man, it’ll be great to see you.”
“Yeah…um, you too, Evan. For sure.”
“One thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t go by ‘Evan’ anymore. I’m Shred now.”
“Shred?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, Shred.”
He’d sounded more congenial than I expected. Actually polite and friendly and upbeat. Bizarre. The whole “people stay here all the time thing” didn’t surprise me. I pictured touring punk bands sleeping on his coffee table or transient artists living in the kitchen. For months at a time. Freaks who made obscene sculptures out of aluminum foil and snorted angel dust. I made a mental note to bring my own soap.
I had Motorcar’s address memorized, a couple of Mapquest maps so I could find both his and Shred’s place, a list of zingers, jar of instant iced tea and a full tank of gas. That was all
I needed. And the soap. I just had to polish my paragraph of zingers to a fine sheen and I’d be good. I read it over and hated it. Too wordy. I crumpled it up and threw it in the sink. Screw it. Plenty of time to think up a new one. I started working up some new lines as soon as I got in the car.
You sleazebag mistake of a human filth…piece. Piece of…
Nuh-uh.
You disgustingly rotten slime…monster.
No—it wasn’t a fucking science fiction movie. I would think of something. The day had come up quick but I still had time to construct the perfect series of zingers. I imagined them shooting out of my mouth like a magical death ray. So sweet. I just hoped that my crappy Hyundai motor wouldn’t blow before I reached my state of ultimate redemption. I was going to be so healthy after this, I would have to rent a storage unit for all my extra health. Carly would be sure to notice the change, so winning her back should be easy. Potential employers were going to notice it in job interviews. The new me was going to fucking rock. I stepped on the gas pedal. The plastic had broken off leaving a metal nub but it still worked. I told her to take it easy, one mile at a time, girl. You can do it. Just get me there. As I crossed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge I looked over toward D.C., but the summer haze rising off the Potomac was so thick I could barely see the tiny Capitol and Monument. The river looked like it was about to start boiling from underneath, plotting to suck everything down with it back into the primordial slop. I thought about the earth before the invention of time, when it was all a bunch of lava lakes and toxic ooze. They didn’t have problems like perverts and stalkers back then.
I was already halfway through Fairfax County when I realized I hadn’t been working on my zingers.
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