You gross sonofabitch.
Terrible.
You worthless piece of disgusting puke.
Worse.
I had Motorcar’s street address locked down solid, but no zings. 2214 Glade Farms Way. It sounded too nice for him. Who wouldn’t want the easy-going times of life on a glade farm? Why did they need a farm to grow glades anyway? Wasn’t a glade just a thing of giant grass? Didn’t they just grow naturally, like, in meadows and shit? The contradictions were leading me to fantasize violence, something I was really trying to get away from. What other topics could I think about? Pro football, space travel, what I would do if I won the lottery. Nothing stuck as a topic to ponder. Maybe I needed a hobby. After all this is over, I should take up a hobby. How about card tricks? No. Kung Fu? Possibility. I could always get better at paint-ball. Maybe I should try out for the local paint-ball league.
The car started making this weird zushing noise. It didn’t sound bad but it didn’t sound good either. Maybe there was a Canadian goose stuck under the wheel well. Zush. No, probably not. Wasn’t sure what else it could be. Zush...zush…zush.
I got to the Richmond area close to sunset. I started seeing warehouses, industrial buildings, a baseball stadium, so I figured I must be getting close. I got out my directions and kept my eyes peeled for the Belvidere Street exit. It came up quick.
Richmond was a sleepy looking city. Didn’t have that crisp buzz of D.C. It seemed overgrown with weeds and humidity, a city that was nestled in the depths of summer and lolled there like a lazy head in a soft pillow. There was something relaxed in the air. I liked it. The twilight made everything look yellow and red. I felt like I was driving into another time. Shred’s neighborhood was supposed to be coming up on the right. I turned on Idlewood Avenue and took a left on South Laurel Street, which was his street. These were the easiest directions I’d ever followed. I took this as a good sign.
The houses were old slumping row houses, like a hundred years old. Most of them had these Wild West front porches, some with swirly ornate carvings around the tops. Most of them needed paint. Actually, all of them needed paint. And siding. Giant chunks of siding were missing in some cases, exposing the tar paper. The narrow one-way street was packed with parked cars on both sides, leaving barely enough room for my car to fit through. The porches and sidewalks were jam packed with screaming little kids, women with giant arms and angry looks on their faces and old men with sideburns and baseball caps drinking Budweiser. One of them was working on a car even though it was practically dark. This was not a neighborhood that one might describe as privileged. The strange thing was, everyone was white, from the lady in the NASCAR tee-shirt to the ten-year-old boys with no shirts who were jumping and dashing and raising general hell, to the young teenage girl I saw pushing a stroller down the street. I hoped the baby in the stroller was her little sister and not her daughter. Holy jeez.
When I saw the full spread of a Confederate flag displayed against the front of one house, anchored from the sill of a second story window for all the world to see, I knew I was in some kind of all-white, inner-city redneck ghetto. But, aside from being racists, I figured they were harmless enough. Until I got to the next intersection. There was a huge throng of late-teens and early-twenty-something bad-asses all hanging out on the sidewalk and street, their heads shaved or close cropped, mostly wearing white tee-shirts or wife-beaters and giant pants, some with their shirts off. A couple of girls were scattered in, wearing too much make-up and looking overweight and underage. Hip-hop beats blasted from a car stereo rig that probably cost more than the car it boomed from, if you subtracted the cost of the shiny, pimped-out wheels. These guys looked like they wanted nothing more than to smoke some crack and kick some ass. A few of them glared at me as I drove by. I looked straight ahead and cruised on until I found Evan’s house, two long, thankful blocks from the mayhem.
I found a parking space across the street from Shred’s and practically ran to the front door, even though the ruffians were long out of sight. Shred’s block was a lot quieter. I saw a lady out on her front porch watering some plants. She actually looked kind of more middle class, the wooden siding on her house freshly painted light blue. What kind of fucked-up neighborhood was this?
The row of ancient row houses that included Shred’s place sat slumping into itself, like it was in a peaceful geriatric coma. There were two front doors, so I figured it was an up-down duplex, but he hadn’t told me which door was his. I took my directions out to double check. “718 S. Laurel St.” There were thick blankets hanging up on the inside of the windows of the downstairs unit, so I couldn’t tell if the lights were on or not. I decided to try that one first, since Shred seemed like someone who would put blankets up over the windows.
I knocked. Nothing. And again. Nothing. So I tried the other door. Nada. One of the neighborhood bad-asses sped by in their little car booming a hip-hop beat at outrageous decibels. I stepped in a little closer to the house. What was it with this redneck white boy hip-hop thing? Shouldn’t they be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd? I knocked again on both doors and after a while I heard some rattling.
A guy with moppy blonde hair opened the door and stood there, hunched over on aluminum crutches. He had on the biggest broken leg cast I’ve ever seen in my life and a miserable smirk on his face. He was wearing a tee-shirt that said Thirty and Dirty. The shirt actually was dirty.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I said ‘come in’ three times.”
“Sorry. Um…hi. I’m Evan’s cousin? I mean Shred. Shred’s cousin?”
He just stared at me. It was dark, but I could see his eyes were glazed over. He smelled like wet cardboard.
“I’m Jarvis,” I said, reaching out my hand.
He just looked down at his one of his crutches and then back at me. “Kenny,” he said.
“So… is he around? He said I could stay here tonight?”
“Naw. He’s working.” Kenny let out a big sigh. It sounded painful.
“Come on in,” he said, like he didn’t really want me to come in. He carefully maneuvered his leg around and crutched himself down the hall.
It was a shotgun apartment, three rooms and a bathroom off a long hallway ending in a living room with the kitchen beyond that. Looked like it still had the original plaster from 1908. A smell of weird incense floated in the air, mixing with the wet cardboard. I followed crutches guy. He must have broken his leg in fifty places, the cast was so huge.
The living room was full-on zany. Walls were covered with this crazy artwork, cartoony paintings of wacky faces with their features all stretched out and crooked in strange colors. One of them looked just like our dead Uncle Pie-rold, with his eyes shut and his tongue sticking out, laying across the top of a giant toaster. There was an orange shag rug from the 70s on the floor. The coffee table, pushed up close to the couch so Kenny could reach stuff, featured the biggest mound of crap I’d ever seen. Usual items like ashtrays, car keys, beer cans, a bottle opener, CDs, bits of paper, junk mail, pens and pencils, an empty can of cashews, sunglasses, but then there was all this other stuff: a little red ceramic frog that looked really out of place, anti-itch salve, a Native American pot pipe, a small brass Buddha, an old 35mm camera, a woman’s silver necklace and an open metal box that contained a variety of pill bottles and a bag of weed. When Kenny saw me looking into it he bent over and snapped the lid shut. The TV was on. Looked like something on PBS. An old air conditioner hummed and wheezed in the window, but it didn’t seem to be cooling the air at all. Maybe it took some of the humidity out and that was it.
Kenny started this painful-looking process of transferring himself from crutches to couch. Now I felt bad for knocking on the door. He lifted his cast onto about seven pillows and then just stared off toward the TV with his mouth partly open. I put my backpack on the floor and sat down on the edge of an orange chair. It was a different orange than the rug. I started getting a headache.
>
After I couldn’t take sitting there tapping my feet anymore, I said: “So…what time does Evan get home from work?”
“You mean Shred? ’Round eleven.”
“How’d he get that name, anyway?”
Kenny didn’t answer.
“How’d he get ‘Shred’ as a nickname?”
Nothing.
“’Cause he shreds it,” he finally said.
“He what?”
“He rips it up.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I looked up at one of the paintings, a cartoony face with a purple tongue sticking out and two mismatched eyes. The background was a puke green sky with orange clouds. The frame looked like something found in a dumpster, spray painted burnt orange. Orange was big in here.
“Bong hit?” Kenny offered.
“Oh, no thanks.”
“D’ya mind grabbing me the bong? It’s in the corner.” He pointed toward a two-foot tall, red glass bong. He wasn’t that far from it, but I could see how stretching and twisting up from the couch would kill his leg.
“Sure.” I went over and grabbed the ruby tower of pot-head glory.
“Careful,” Kenny said. “Put it right here.” I set the bong down on the floor near Kenny’s head. “There’s beer if you want one.”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink.”
“I thought all lawyers drank.”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“Shred said you were a lawyer.”
“No, no. I am planning on going to law school, but...”
Kenny just looked at me like—so what’s the difference then?
And yeah, with my red polo shirt and khaki shorts and flip-flops, trimmed professional law office haircut, I looked like a lawyer on my day off.
“You mind gettin’ me one? They’re in the fridge.”
I went and got him a beer from the fridge. The kitchen looked normal. No aluminum foil sculptures featuring things-found-in-the-street, anyway. I gave Kenny his beer and sat back down. He reached into the metal box for some pharmaceuticals and washed a couple down with the beer.
After a while I asked: “So, you mind if I ask how you broke your leg?”
“Skydiving.”
“Nuh-uh. Really?”
“It’s more addictive than heroin and five times as expensive.”
“Wow. You’re like, a skydiving addict?”
“Nothing like it on earth, in hell or outer space.”
“I dunno. Going to space would be pretty…cool?”
There was a heavy silence. I didn’t really believe him. He probably broke it falling off a curb after a long night of drinking. I sat there and thought about how I couldn’t wait to grab Motorcar by the collar and scream zingers into his face.
Kenny did his bong-hit, and I could feel myself getting high off the residuals. Or maybe I just felt strange naturally. I went to take a pee. The bathroom was actually sort of clean. When I came back, some documentary about spiders was on. Kenny readjusted his leg, sucking air in between his teeth and scrunching his face together.
Spiders. It was theorized they may have migrated from another planet, some genetic goo tucked inside the crevice of a meteor that evolved into spiders. Maybe that’s where I came from. I got up to look at the bookshelf of videos and books. There were a couple of classic flicks like Taxi Driver and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and a bunch of documentaries, like: Sirhan & Company: Who Really Killed RFK, The Trilateral Commission: Fact vs. Fiction, The Illuminati Tapes: Secret Governments & Their Minions. For books there was a lot of Phillip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, more non-fiction stuff, The History of Freemasonry, UFOs & The New World Order, etc. Whoa. The word “kook” came to mind. No idea if the kook was Kenny or Shred though, and I didn’t feel much like asking. We sat there for a while not saying anything.
Someone knocked on the front door and it scared the shit out of me. I jerked my head around.
“Don’t worry,” Kenny said, amused at me. “Probably just the cops.”
They knocked again.
“You mind getting it?”
“Okay,” and I jumped up from my seat. I headed down the hall thinking a hotel room might’ve been a better deal than being this guy’s manservant.
I opened the door and saw two absolute freaks—a girl with tattoos all over and piercings in her nose and ears and one eyebrow, her hair molded into short spikes. She wore a black tank top, green army pants cut-offs and old ratty pair of black-and-white Chuck’s. A tall, skinny guy with funeral eyes stood behind her. He was wearing a black trench coat even though it was August. The coat looked lightweight and he didn’t look hot, but still.
The girl looked at me and smiled, almost a laugh. She was tiny, with a gorgeous smile of big sensuous lips and happiness creases. She had a sexy mischievous elf quality, but all the freak stuff kinda ruined it for me.
Then three dogs came charging into the house, nearly knocking me down. They hauled ass down the hallway. “Hey!” I yelled at them, feeling like I had done something wrong by letting them in.
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
“I’m Jarvis. The Shred’s cousin.”
“The Shred?” She smiled. “I’m Summer.”
The tall funeral one did not speak. We both looked at him.
“This is Klavin,” Summer said, hitting the guy on the sleeve of his trench coat. He nodded and we shook hands. His hand felt completely neutral, not hot, not cold. Not dry, not clammy. He seemed barely alive.
“Is Shred still at work?” Summer said.
“I…I believe so, yes.”
“Is Kenny here?”
“Yes. Kenny.”
“Well, um…can we come in?”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.”
Summer smiled again, like I somehow amused her. I led them to the living room, where Kenny’s eyes were even more glazed over than when I left him. They all said What’s up to each other. Summer was spunky, plopping onto the couch next to Kenny with a bit too much energy.
“Ow!” Kenny screamed. “You trying to kill me?”
“Awww,” she said, and started stroking his neck and saying “Poor baby.” He seemed to recover pretty fast. Klavin, who was still standing, looked down at them like he might produce a .45 from under his trench coat at any minute and blow us all away. The dogs were already sitting on the floor chilling out, like they’d been there thirty-seven million times before.
What a bunch of freaks. I wondered if I was even going to recognize my own cousin when he came home. He probably had tattoos of gargoyles and griffins on his face and a beard down to his stomach, a beard inhabited with fruit flies and a family of exotic birds.
Kenny called for a round of beers, and for some reason I said I’d have one. Then I immediately wondered what the hell was I thinking.
“I thought you didn’t drink,” Kenny snapped.
“No, I’m…just one beer.”
“He sat there ten minutes ago and said he didn’t drink.”
“No, I said I wasn’t a lawyer.”
“You’re a lawyer?” Summer said.
“No! I’m not a lawyer. I’m trying to get a job in a law firm, that’s all. Paralegal.” It came out as testy and uptight. Followed by a painful stretch of no talking. Thank god at least the TV was on for some background noise. Now I did want to drink the beer.
Kenny offered bong-hits. Klavin handed out the cold ones, dripping cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
I cracked mine open and felt human again.
I looked down at the open tab on the can. The alcohol smell rose up and tweaked my nose.
No way.
I set the beer down on a rare open space on the coffee table and tried to pretend it never existed.
Summer popped up from the couch and turned off the TV. “Sorry Mister Spider,” she said to the documentary. Then she sat on her knees and picked out a CD. A cloud of pot smoke wafted above, followed by Klavin’s thin cough. And then the last thing I ever would have expected to emerge from
the speakers came rolling out: the sound of Hank Williams. Senior. The real one. Country music from a thousand years ago. This girl Summer was obviously a punker, or some kind of goth variation on the punk theme, so I would have expected her to play some Sex Pistols or Black Flag or other hard stuff. Now I was truly in Bizarro World, where the rednecks played hip-hop and the punkers were into country. I couldn’t wait until “Shred” got home so I could ask him what the fuck was going on—hey man, why are your friends so weird?
With all the weed smoke in there, my head started to feel like a floatation device. Kenny told a skydiving story about a guy whose chute didn’t open. He lived, but broke every bone in his skeleton, had internal injuries, a concussion, months of traction. Summer talked about going to see a show at the Ditch later, which I figured was a club, though I pictured a scraggily punk band actually playing in a roadside ditch. She caught me staring at her. I had never been in such close proximity to a cute girl freak-type. She had a spider web tattoo on her shoulder, but it had a lady bug instead of a spider. On her arm was a moon with a weird cartoon face, one looked like part of a fire truck. One of them may or may not have been Satan. I couldn’t tell what her other tattoos were. I thought about the kind of upscale sophistication that Carly was always trying to display. Summer didn’t seem to give two craps about any of that. It struck me as kind of refreshing. Then again, maybe it was just the weed smoke thinking for me. These people didn’t seem to care much about anything. Did they even work? I couldn’t picture Klavin at a job. Then again, I was jobless myself, so who was I to talk?
The front door blasted open and I jumped again. Shred’s grand entrance into the room was to walk in with his head down and this mischievous little smile on his face. He looked weirdly clean cut, short hair, shaven, wearing catering black and whites, except without the bow tie. He had a slightly wild bed-head hairdo, but other than that, he actually looked kind of normal.
“Jarvis!” he said. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you too.” I put my hand out but he gave me a hug instead. He smelled vaguely of blue cheese and salmon.
Cold Plate Special Page 7